Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Busting the scandal bubble by digby

This Libertarian ticket of former Republican Governors Gary Johnson and William Weld is going to be very interesting. Take this moment with Chuck Todd when Weld, who was the head of the Reagan Department's Criminal Justice Division, blows Chuck Todd's mind:

“I will give you one news tip,” he began. “All this stuff about Secretary Clinton’s use of email accounts and the report that came out, how she might get indicted, I’m not buying it.”

[...]
“I’m not buying it,” Weld said. “You can’t indict somebody if there’s no evidence of criminal intent, and I don’t see any evidence of criminal intent.”

You don't have to be a federal prosecutor to make this assessment. I've never been able to figure out what crime people thought was committed here unless they thought Clinton was a North Korean agent or something. Not that it matters. This is a patented Clinton scandal which always starts from the premise that there was some unspecified criminal intent and goes from there. There never is but by the time that's proved, everyone's been through the wringer and half the public believes forever that something illegal happened even though it didn't. And that's the point.